APOD: The Great Meteor Storm of 1833 (2024 Dec 10)

[APOD Robot]

The Great Meteor Storm of 1833

Explanation: It was a night of 100,000 meteors. The Great Meteor Storm of 1833 was perhaps the most impressive meteor event in recent history. Best visible over eastern North America during the pre-dawn hours of November 13, many people -- including a young Abraham Lincoln -- were woken up to see the sky erupt in streaks and flashes. Hundreds of thousands of meteors blazed across the sky, seemingly pouring out of the constellation of the Lion (Leo). The featured image is a digitization of a wood engraving which itself was based on a painting from a first-person account. We know today that the Great Meteor Storm of 1833 was caused by the Earth moving through a dense part of the dust trail expelled from Comet Tempel-Tuttle. The Earth moves through this dust stream every November during the Leonid meteor shower. Later this week you might get a slight taste of the intensity of that 1833 meteor storm by witnessing the annual Geminid meteor shower.

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[Ann]

Well, wow! Imagine experiencing something like that! The mind boggles.

The Great Meteor Storm of 1833. Image Credit: Engraving: Adolf Vollmy; Original Art: Karl Jauslin

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Of course, I'd rather have a 100,000 meteors than one asteroid big enough to kill the dinosaurs! Yes I would! If I only could.

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

And today is the day of another glitter show - the Nobel Prize ceremonies in Stockholm. The winners get their medals and what not, and then all the guests, the winners and their families and a lot of ambassadors and politicians and royalties and other dignitaries sit down for a grand banquet, and then it's time for a dance.

Click to view full size image

The Nobel banquet. Credit: Jonas Ekströmer/TT

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Sorry about the tiny picture! I just like it.

Ann

[florid_snow]

Seem like good luck not just for the meteor shower, but also for clear skies. It was November, not always great weather. Last few meteor showers I've attempted always seem to be cloudy or too much moonlight.

Many planetariums have a way to simulate an intense meteor shower like this, I'm sure it's not really the same, but probably as close as most of us will ever get. If you get a chance to visit a planetarium, the operators are usually happy to take requests.

[guest again]

Driving at night with your high beams on in a moderate snowfall you experience something very similar.
The faster you go the more thrilling it gets until.........

[johnnydeep]

Stupid question: in the impressively scientific looking simulation at https://www.meteorshowers.org/view/Leonids, the individual pieces of comet depicted are not actually measured and tracked objects in space, right? They're just a statistically derived density dispersion of what the total dust cloud must mostly likely look like, yes?

[Chris Peterson]

Stupid question: in the impressively scientific looking simulation at https://www.meteorshowers.org/view/Leonids, the individual pieces of comet depicted are not actually measured and tracked objects in space, right? They're just a statistically derived density dispersion of what the total dust cloud must mostly likely look like, yes?

Meteor showers are analyzed by numerical integration. An ejection model for the parent body creates particles that are then individually propagated (subject to solar radiation pressure, solar wind, gravity, relativistic effects, and more), producing debris streams that are tied to specific perihelia, and which allow the intensity of future showers to be predicted with pretty high accuracy. So here we're seeing a theoretical cloud based on many orbits of the parent.

[johnnydeep]

Stupid question: in the impressively scientific looking simulation at https://www.meteorshowers.org/view/Leonids, the individual pieces of comet depicted are not actually measured and tracked objects in space, right? They're just a statistically derived density dispersion of what the total dust cloud must mostly likely look like, yes?

Meteor showers are analyzed by numerical integration. An ejection model for the parent body creates particles that are then individually propagated (subject to solar radiation pressure, solar wind, gravity, relativistic effects, and more), producing debris streams that are tied to specific perihelia, and which allow the intensity of future showers to be predicted with pretty high accuracy. So here we're seeing a theoretical cloud based on many orbits of the parent.

[alex555]

The engraving looks like Andor's season 1 episode 7.

Alex